DAYTONA BEACH, Fla.—With points swaps for the Daytona 500 officially complete, NASCAR will continue to evaluate its top-35 rule and how it oversees the transfer of points.

About the only consensus in the debate is that NASCAR has a complicated system that brings its credibility into question.

NASCAR does not allow teams to purchase points from another team in order to get one of the 35 guaranteed starting spots for a race. The previous season’s points are used to determine guaranteed spots for the first five races of the current year. NASCAR does allow a points transfer if the previous owner retains a minority stake in the team that receives the points.

In the last few weeks, NASCAR has approved transfers of points. The new partnership between Stewart-Haas Racing and Tommy Baldwin Racing allowed TBR’s guaranteed spot in the Daytona 500 to move to Danica Patrick. And Michael Waltrip Racing constructed a deal that put Mark Martin in the field with points earned by FAS Lane Racing last season.

FAS Lane Racing is working with Roush Fenway Racing to secure the points of the No. 6 team, which closed down, from last year beginning with the second race of the season at Phoenix. If it gets those points, it will be locked into the four races following Daytona instead of having to qualify on speed.

While it looks for ways to make the process more credible, NASCAR likely won’t get rid of the top-35 rule nor allow teams to sell points outright. And it certainly isn’t considering franchising.

“It’s an ongoing debate internally,” NASCAR Senior Vice President Steve O’Donnell said Saturday at Daytona International Speedway. “It’s given people a lot of opportunities to get in the sport.

“We don’t allow point selling. That’s been our philosophy. … There’s a lot more to it that goes into it other than a piece of paper that you may or may not see in terms of forming a partnership. It’s a challenge explaining it, it’s a difficult thing to explain to the fans. We get that. But we’ve got to have healthy car owners out there.”

The TBR-SHR partnership has received significant attention, partly because of the popular Patrick but also because the car likely will remain in the top 35 with Patrick running 10 races and David Reutimann driving the other 26 in the No. 10 car. The car is listed with Tommy Baldwin as the owner and crew chief.

Baldwin is expected to be in the pit stall for the races, O’Donnell said. SHR Competition Director Greg Zipadelli, who is considered to be doing much of the traditional crew chief role, is listed as a “race strategist.”

NASCAR has the option of fining and disciplining Zipadelli for any infractions even if he’s not listed as crew chief, O’Donnell said.

The deal not only has soured the outlook of some fans, but even Stewart appears to be distancing himself from it. When asked about it Thursday, he said team executive vice president Brett Frood or Zipadelli would be better to answer any questions because they are the ones who handled the deal.

O’Donnell understands that it impacts the sport’s credibility.

“It’s got to pass the test for us—there’s a number of [requests] that you all don’t see that get denied, which I know is probably hard to believe,” O’Donnell said. “It’s our job to do our best to police those as best we can and feel like we can justify it to the fan base.

“Are there some gray areas? There certainly are. We are aware where the fans are at on this issue. The balance for us is when you look at the top-35 rule, that’s hugely important to the owners.”

While it appears Patrick will run SHR-prepared cars (with Hendrick engines) and Reutimann will drive TBR-prepared cars (with Earnhardt Childress Racing engines), O’Donnell said NASCAR will monitor the organization to make sure some of the same crew members are working on the car all season.

Patrick will only be able to use chassis certified to TBR. Any cars certified for SHR’s Tony Stewart or Ryan Newman cannot be used by Patrick unless they are recertified as TBR cars, O’Donnell said.

All money earned by the car will go to Baldwin. NASCAR won’t require a team to use a sole engine supplier for a full season because that would allow engine builders to have too much control over the team.

“It’s not a points swap at all,” O’Donnell said. “It’s a driver coming over that’s not been different than other drivers in the past. … Tommy Baldwin is the registered owner of that team. It is what it is.”

It is in the best interest of the sport to have an owner such as Baldwin have a healthy organization, O’Donnell said, and he noted that the mergers of Richard Petty’s organizations in recent years were able to keep their points and guaranteed positions.

“Richard Petty—it was a factor with Richard Petty to allowing that legacy to continue on, to allow those points to be there,” O’Donnell said. “If you go back in history, there have been a lot of different partnerships that have allowed teams to get back on their feet a little bit.”

O’Donnell said NASCAR will consider creating a deadline for points transfers.

“These deals have come together later and later, which is more and more challenging to explain,” O’Donnell said. “Do you look at a deadline right at the end of the season where we put things in place? That could be challenging for some owners but that may be something we need to look at.”

The top-35 rule was implemented so that teams with sponsorship could virtually guarantee to the sponsor that it would be in a race as long as the team adequately performed on the track.

“It goes back to the overall health of the sport,” O’Donnell said. “If it was just sponsorship that protected the top 35, yet when Red Bull came in and wasn’t top 35 and they were sent home a number of times, you would say the top 35 is a deterrent to a new owner.

“So part of this is how do we bring in new, healthy owners and give them the best chance to qualify for a race.”

The Nationwide Series has a similar rule but it goes to only the top 30 cars in owner points; the Camping World Truck Series, which has 36-car fields, guarantees only 25 spots. O’Donnell said it is possible NASCAR could at some point change the number of guaranteed spots for Cup.